Now Available: “The Constant Reader”

To browse my annual reading lists (and reading recommendations), click the Constant Reader tab at the top of this blog. I’ve posted (in reverse chronological order) my reading lists dating back to 1989, and will post the few missing lists – and lists of titles read before 1989 – as soon as I can locate (or compile) them.

The books I’m currently reading are listed on the right-hand side of the blog.

From Cal’s Commonplace Book

The Constant Reader

Books Read This Year

Updated November 13, 2018

“I continue to think of myself as someone who is essentially a reader—a man who takes a deep pleasure in good books, who views reading as a fine mode of acquiring experience, and who still brings the highest expectations to what he reads. By the highest expectations I mean that I am perhaps a naïve person who has never ceased to believe that books can change his life, and decisively so.” – Joseph Epstein (from Partial Payments: Essays on Writers and Their Lives [1989], quoted by Patrick Kurp at his blog Anecdotal Evidence)

Just Finished:

Tyrant: Shakespeare and Politics (2018) by Stephen Greenblatt

One of the joys of browsing the New Books shelf at my local library is discovering that one of my favorite authors has published a new book. When I recently stumbled upon Stephen Greenblatt’s latest, I instantly put aside everything else I was reading to start it. Tyrant, like his earlier The Swerve and even earlier Will in the World, is a tour de force. Very little that I’ve read since Mr. Trump was elected President has helped me better cope with this colossal blunder of the U.S. electorate (actually, the Electoral College), but Tyrant helps a lot. Greenblatt wrote it to cope with his own dismay at Trump and his allegedly widespread and numerous supporters. It’s a short book, but it is full of spot-on observations about the parallels between Mr. Trump and Shakespeare’s Richard II, Macbeth, Lear, and Coriolanus. And of course makes me even more impressed with Shakespeare’s penetrating insight into human nature, and Greenblatt’s ability to marshall those insights into such a compelling study.

Currently reading (in addition to trying to keep up with the recent issues of the planet’s two best magazines, The Sun and the New Yorker):

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (1978) by Barbara Tuchman

Finished earlier this year:

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2009) by Rebecca Skloot

If most nonfiction books were written this well, people would read fewer novels! Once I started this tale (for my book club), it was difficult to put it down until I finished it. It took ten years for Skloot to write this first book of hers; I hope I won’t have to wait that long before she writes another one, so I can read it also, regardless of what she decides to write about. Skloot is that good – and the amount of research that went into her writing is as impressive as her riveting writing style.

Several of this prolific author’s previous bestselling books (The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life, The Care of the Soul, A Religion of One’s Own,A Blue Fire: Selected Writings of James Hillman) have been on my To Be Read list, so when I found his latest at the library the other day, I figured I might as well finally get around to reading him – especially since this latest one addressed one of my more recent preoccupations: books about mindful retirement. I can understand why Moore’s books have been so popular: his style is very conversational and his arguments are non-combative and often persuasive, especially when Moore’s explaining Jungian-based theories of meaning (some of which – and with the pronounced exception of dream analysis) have held a long-time fascination for me). But I was surprised to find myself disappointed in this book. Perhaps I’ve already internalized most of the insights and advice on offer here, or I find Moore too repetitive, or both. Since I’ve already bought copies of those other books of Moore’s, I will eventually get around to examining them, but maybe not as soon as I was hoping to?

At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails (2016) by Sarah Bakewell

If there were ever an ideal book for Calvin to read, this must be it: it’s nonfiction, features multiple historical figures who are legends in the fields of philosophy and psychology (my two college majors and the two subjects that have most enthralled me all my life), told by a master story-teller who had already written another of my favorite books (How to Live: or, A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer). The full subtitle of the book includes the names of the figures whose lives and works Bakewell covers: Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Bakewell’s masterpiece is a perfect blend of difficult concepts rendered understandable, meticulous historical research, fascinating backstories and spellbinding gossip, compelling speculation supported by startling insights – all of it produced in the most engaging prose imaginable. My highest praise for any book is that I know long before I finish reading it that I’m going to want to read it again, and this borrowed library book is one that I will definitely be buying my own copy of.

My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues (2017) by Pamela Paul

This memoir of how an introverted book nerd became editor of the New York Times Book Review is interlaced with remarkably articulate (and often humorous) asides on the pleasures and perils of book love. Paul entertainingly captures the complete range of often difficult-to-describe experiences with reading that every lifetime reader will recognize with glee (or chagrin). I am so glad I found this writer and this book (one of several she’s written).

The Solitary Vice: Against Reading (2008) by Mikita Brottman

Brottman is a psychotherapist and literature professor, and her book is an intriguing tonic for diehard bookaholics like me. The first half of her book, before she ventures more thoroughly into her personal reading habits and history, is the most interesting section, although the entire book held my interest. The striking parallels Brottman draws between the activities (often addictions) of reading and masturbation – and the similarities between the changed social attitudes about both – are compellingly and often amusingly described. Brottman’s humble but erudite writing style is engaging regardless of the specific literary territory she’s surveying, and she surveys a lot of them (e.g., science fiction, Gothic romances, true crime, comic books, psychological case studies). Every chapter of the book contains insights and shocks of self-recognition. The author’s list of works cited and consulted is fascinating, her list of relevant Internet sites is particularly useful), and her Acknowledgements page is as hilarious as it is unusual.

Wanderlust: A History of Walking (2000) by Rebecca Solnit

Solnit is one of my favorite living writers, and this is the second time I’ve read this book: I read a library copy nine years ago – and, mortifyingly didn’t remember a word of it, just the fact that I remembered loving it. Late last summer, when I began taking long walks most days to build up my stamina for my then-upcoming trip to Italy, I bought a copy of Wanderlust and am so glad I did. Not only because it took me so long to finish it (I took it with me to Italy, but didn’t get around to as much reading as I’d planned to do), but because Solnit includes so many excellent quotations about walking, which I am planning to add (eventually) to the Commonplace Book posted elsewhere on my blog. Another unusual thing about Wanderlust is how each magnificent chapter could stand alone as an essay on a particular aspect of the history or psychology of walking: one wouldn’t need to read the chapters sequentially. The angles Solnit comes at her subject from are often unexpected ones, and many of her own sentences are also definitely quoteworthy. I won’t be surprised if I decide one day to read this book again for a third time – it’s that rich, that dense with insight and information. And I will certainly track down Solnit’s more recent books, some of which are probably based on screeds on her Facebook page (and elsewhere).

Emerson: The Mind on Fire (1995) by Robert D. Richardson, Jr.

A whale of a book (563 pages, excluding the notes), but completely enthralling – Richardson’s channeling of Emerson’s motivations and abiding interests are subtle and convincing. I soon got so exasperated at the number of intriguing (and obscure) book titles that Richardson mentions that Emerson read that I ended up buying a copy of the book so I can refer to it more conveniently. (Originally, I obtained my copy of this book from the library, after unearthing, late last year, a review of Richardson’s book that I’d saved from a 1995 (!) New Yorker.) I will definitely be investigating Richardson’s other books, which include a biography of Thoreau. And I am glad I at some point picked up a copy of Emerson’s selected essays, as I am now definitely going to read some of them. What an amazing mind – an authentic pioneer of the intellect – and from now on a personal hero.

I originally read this book ten years ago and recently re-read it after suggesting it to the book club I’m a member of. Shocking as it was to realize I’d forgotten all the details of the story, it was gratifying to find that my fond memories of its being one of those near-perfect novels were reinforced by a second reading. The fact that a former librarian (and her niece) wrote the book, and wrote it in the form of letters and journal entries made its near-perfection even sweeter. Our book club is looking forward to the movie based on the book that’s being released this year, hoping the screenwriter(s) didn’t mangle what is likely one of the most delightful novels you’ll ever read. Plus you’ll learn a lot about the five-year Nazi occupation of this British island, something I was unaware of until I stumbled upon this book.